Monday, June 14, 2010

scheißhaus

The following things are wrong with my house:1.today there was no electricity2.then the electricity got fixed3.and then it broke again and now there are lights (which is convenient because it is night time and the barbeque lighter I bought from Foodland six months ago for $2 has finally run out of gas which means I can’t light the gas stove) BUT everything else doesn’t work. No toast. No micro waved soup. No tea. We’re out of coffee anyway. No fridge. No Internet. NO HEATER. WAH4.there are possums living in the roof5.I never knew what kind of horrific noises possums made. They looked like such friendly little yowi toy creatures but they sound like DEMONS. And they live in the roof6.Apart from the noises they are capable of creating they are also capable of TEARING A BIG HOLE THROUGH THE CEILING7.Things like possum poo fall through this hole8.The hole is also stained by things like possum pee9.It was sitting there with its fat arse hanging through the hole (the hole isn’t particularly large.. at the moment) and we poked it and I didn’t even move10.One of my housemates always leaves dental floss around on the bathroom sink. I’m not sure if he’s used it already and couldn’t be bothered throwing it away, or if he wants to re-use it or if he’s just leaving it there for future convenience. (it’s a pretty weird thing to be grossed out by there’s way worse things someone could do but I just don’t understand!) if you’re the kind of person who flosses (I’m not. I’m the kind of person who falls asleep and just before they fall asleep remembers they haven’t brushed their teeth yet but then can’t be bothered getting up so doesn’t brush their teeth anyway) - so you have to be a super clean person to want to floss your teeth but why if you were a clean person who flosses would you be the kind of person who wasn’t clean with your dental floss!11.Its really giant and cold12.It’s always colder inside than it is outside during the day13.In summer it will be really giant and hot14.There are random holes in the walls filled with steel wool15.There’s a piece of something in front of my wardrobe which creeks every time I walk over it. I think there might be a secret cellar but there’s carpet over it16.My windows look like jail windows17.The hallway door has a ‘window’ in it but no glass18.There are random nails nailed into the side of the kitchen door for no reason, like not the kind of nails you could hang anything on just the kind of nails that would be there if someone decided they were bored and wanted to nail some nails somewhere for no reason and make the house look stupid19.The toilets periodically stop working20.The water is yellow and tastes like blood/rust/cancer/death21.The theme colours are orange brown and yellow22.The front light definitely doesn’t work it exploded when we tried to fix it23.Our door bell sounds like one of those alarm clocks from 50 years ago that’s just two bells ringing really fast and loudly and quickly and offensively and that’s not so bad but what is bad is sometimes it gets stuck and the horrible offensive really loud sound never ends24.The shower head sucks its really hard to have a shower without getting your hair wet and you can’t turn it on without getting your arm all wet25.There’s this kid who lives next door and he has a dog and some times just wanders into our back yard looking for the dog. It’s unnerving.26.The tap doesn’t stop dripping27.Some of the other lights don’t work28.The fan in our lounge room is definitely going to get pulled off the ceiling again because the ceiling is really low and drunk people can not resist the idea of swinging off a conveniently reachable fan29.There’s an old meatsafe in the backyard (this isn’t really something ‘wrong’ with the back yard it’s just weird)

Apart from that it’s ok. The good things are that I have a giant room and the light has an extra convenience-from-your-bed light switch pulley thing (which isn’t really in the right place in relation to where my bed is but that’s ok). I can fit chairs in my room. And because this house is so crap I think we can probably claim that anything that breaks was ‘already like that’ and they’ll believe us. The possum-hole isn’t in my room and apart from the electricity issue and the fact that I blew my bike tire last night on a rock on the way to work and have realized I am completely stranded as far as relying on public transport because there isn’t really any but it’s not actually that far away from the city. And living with four boys is actually way better than living by myself. I may take that back later though. I don’t really think I will though.

I successfully produced 5000 words on Friday in an 11-hour period. I’m quite happy with my efforts. One assignment was like 30 pages and 9500 words long more or less a thesis. I’ll be interested to see how that turns out, basically those assignments will determine what I do with my life next year – whether I am allowed to go to Berlin or not and obviously whether or not I’m going to berlin for a year is going to have a fairly large impact on the rest of this year and my life in general. When I put it like that I probably should have put a little bit more effort in (a little bit earlier too) to keep my options open. I wonder if I’m allowed to go still if I get a less than credit average next semester.

My German abilities are definitely not good enough to produce the kinds of essays I’m writing for Australian university. My current mastery encompasses talking about ‘what I like to do’ and ‘what things I have in my room’ but certainly not the ‘continual dialectic between consumption and aestheticism’. I’m screwed. Ich lieber esse. Maybe they’ll let me hand up assignments in English and admire my English skills. Or maybe I’ll just put them into google translator and hope for the best. It’s pretty funny doing that and then translating them back again. One of my emails had obviously originally said ‘you’re a jerk’ and came back as ‘you are beef jerky’.

I was actually quite interested in all of the subjects I was doing this semester – usually they are the most boring load of useless crap things I’ve ever encountered but this time they were all really interesting (but admittedly they weren’t taught particularly well – especially one which was run by this little Japanese lady who was really nice but could not explain anything articulately to save her life and she was so nice and timid that tutorials – which were 2 hours – were the most painfully awkward thing in the world like she’d ask a question and there would just be a long silence) but even though I was interested in them I still found it basically impossible to motivate myself to actually do any of the work until the day (or the day after) it was due! What is wrong with my life. I’m just not really that interested in anything. But nothing is actually that interesting – tell me if I am wrong. It’s not. Who cares about shoes or dresses or perfume or university or music. It’s kind of interesting but only in comparison with that there is nothing more interesting.

I like the idea of going somewhere where no one knows me or thinks anything about me yet so I can be anyone I want them to think I am. Maybe I’ll re-name myself like Asians do. Germans seem to have a problem with ‘mary’ they tried to write my name down and wrote ‘mari’ I thought that was cute. Marie would be preferable. But what about ‘jens’ or ‘jutta’ or ‘manfred’ like the names in the German textbook. They have the funniest names. Although according to my google search for ‘German popular names’ the names they actually have are pretty normal i.e. paul, anna, laura, Emily, nick wow marie even made it in. how disappointing.